We were informed of a rather interesting deal in which the HD 7990 Malta graphics card is sold for an incredible price of €469 inc. VAT. The price cut follows the recent push to get rid of the HD 7900 series that should be soon replaced by AMD's newest R9-series of graphics cards.

Unfortunately, this deal is currently limited to Alternate.nl and as long as supplies last, but we were also informed that it might even extend to Alternate in Germany and even maybe Poland. This puts the HD 7990, at least the one from the deal, below the price of the GTX 780 and since AMD has started to actively fix micro-stuttering issues it definitely sounds like a great deal, especially considering that you get quite a few games from AMD's Never Settle bonanza.

Previously, all partners dropped the price of the HD 7990 down to US $699 in an aggressive move against the GTX 780. The AMD Radeon HD 7990 features two 28nm fully enabled Tahiti GPUs for a total of 4096 stream processors and 6GB of GDDR5 memory (3GB per GPU). The GPUs are working at 950MHz base and 1000MHz Boost clocks and while 6GB of GDDR5 memory paired up with 2x384-bit memory interface ended up clocked at 6000MHz.

Currently in most of Europe the HD 7990 goes for anywhere between €520 and €620 depedning on the retailer and the actual region. Hopefully, more partners will follow Club3D's move.

According to info over at Techpowerup.com, some AMD AIB partners will decide to skip the Tahiti LE GPU scheduled to appear on November 27th.

As rumored earlier, Tahiti LE will not get the, so called, AMD reference design card, thus leaving AMD partners to design their own graphics cards and reuse the existing PCBs from the HD 7900 or 7800 series. Club3D already showed its HD 7870 joker card that is scheduled to appear on November 27th and has pretty much the same specs expected to be seen on graphics cards with the Tahiti LE GPU.

In case you missed it, the Tahiti LE will feature 1536 stream processors and work at 925MHz base and 975MHz Boost GPU clocks while 2GB of GDDR5 memory will be set to work at an impressive 6000MHz, at least on the Club3D limited edition graphics card. Despite earlier rumors that Tahiti LE will be a part of HD 7800 series, rather than the HD 7900 series and that partners might name the card as the HD 7890, Club3D decided to make it a part of its limited edition HD 7870 series graphics card and simply call it the HD 7870 jokerCard.

Since most, if not all, AMD based Club3D cards comes from TuL, the same company behind Powercolor and VTX3D, it is quite possible that these will do a similar graphics card.

According to the details over at Techpowerup.com some major partners will rather decide to skip this GPU. Some of our sources, including one of the major AIB partners, confirmed that there are no plans for such graphics card, at least not in the near future.

Following the loss versus the GTX 680, AMD used its Radeon HD 7970 Gigaherz Edition to set some new performance records, but the speed increase brought about a noise increase as well. Club 3D is among the few AMD partners who took it upon themselves to fix what may be the HD 7970’s biggest downside – the overly loud fan. The new HD 7970 royalAce features Club 3D's CoolStream dual-slot cooler with two fans and three heatpipes that promises lower temperatures and lower noise when compared to the reference HD 7970 GHz Edition graphics card.

Based on AMD's HD 7970 GHz Edition, or Tahiti XT2 GPU with 2048 stream processors, the Club 3D HD 7970 royalAce has been set to work at 1050MHz for the base and 1100MHz for boost GPU clock with 3072MB of GDDR5 memory clocked at 6000MHz and paired up with a 384-bit memory interface.

Club 3D’s packaging is miniature yet tough enough and also has plenty of info on it. Of course, the emphasis is on the GHz Edition of AMD’s HD 7970 but the fact that it’s a special Club 3D RoyalAce SuperOverClock version wasn’t ignored either.

The box holds the graphics card, driver CD and a CrossFire connector. Similarly to what we’ve seen from XFX in these past years, Club3D decided to bundle a knob hanger saying “Do Not Disturb, Gaming in Progress”, for gamers who don’t like interruptions.

HD 7970 royalAce graphics card is special for its cooler, which is based on Cool Stream technology. Unlike reference cooling, where the fan is located towards the end of the card and blows through the card, Club3D opted for two fans that push air downwards, straight at the heatsink. As a result, some of the heat may be released inside the case so you might want to make sure your in-case airflow is adequate.

Both fans are connected to the same 4-pin power connector and the RPM can be regulated in Catalyst Control Centre.

The company used thick heatpipes that transfer heat to the farthest parts of the heatsink with ease. Due to the tall heatpipes, and the way they’re bent, the cooler is a few centimeters taller than the standard cooler. Still, although it exceeds the height of the PCB, even the most traditional of cases shouldn’t have problems fitting it inside. You can get a better idea of how tall they are when the card is viewed from the back.

Just like the reference card, the card uses one 6-pin and one 8-pin power connector.

Three heatpipes go through the cooler but Club 3D made sure they’re bent in a way so as to provide five contact points.

You can see where the GPU touches the base, as well as the fact that the HD 7970’s GPU is rotated by 45 degrees. The cooler is held in place with four screws only, but we didn’t notice any instability or vibration.

The card has 3GB of Hynix memory, which we’ve grown accustomed to seeing on pretty much hall AMD and Nvidia cards. The memory is rated at 1500MHz and this card is no exception.

The I/O panel has one dual-link DVI, standard HDMI out and two mini DisplayPort outs.

HD 7970 royalAce comes with two CrossFire connectors, meaning that it’s possible to daisy chain up to four cards for some fierce CrossFireX muscle. Although the shroud hides the CrossFire connectors, it will not be a problem as CrossFire bridge connectors are flexible.

The Club 3D Radeon HD 7970 royalAce comes with a toggle switch. This switch allows you to switch between two separate BIOS versions, 1) factory defaults and 2) unprotected. The graphics card comes standard at 1050 MHz GPU clock speed with overclocking headroom up to 1.1GHz and beyond.

Overclocking the core by additional 110MHz was a pretty nice result, seeing as how the card already runs 50MHz faster than the reference 1GHz. After our overclock, GPU Boost clock was 1210MHz. We squeezed out another 80MHz from the memory (240MHz effectively). We left the fans in AUTO mode – there was no need to speed them up manually since the temperatures went up to 78°C after our overclock. We’ll discuss thermals in more detail next.

Thermals and Noise

Thanks to the CoolStream technology, which involves a large heatsink, two fans and specially bent heatpipes, Club3D’s solution outperforms the reference one. The feat is all the more impressive considering we’re talking about a factory overclocked GPU here .

When idle, the GPU was around 39°C and the fans were quiet. After longer gaming sessions, temperatures climbed up to 76°C. When the card got hot, we could hear the fans easily (they ran at about 2900RPM), but they were still music to our ears compared to the overly loud reference solution.

We had to remove the thermal paste that was on the base of the cooler, because it seems that the screws were a bit loose, which caused the paste to harden. Our first attempt at testing resulted in temperatures over 90°C, which was a clear indicator that something went wrong somewhere. Luckily, we fixed it and the cooler started showing its real face. We had no need for manual RPM settings, not even after overclocking, because auto-regulation ran just fine and temperature never exceeded 78°C. Our additional overclock made the fans louder, but not to the point where we’d call them too loud.

Power Consumption

AMD HD 7970 GHz Edition can draw significantly more power than the initially launched HD 7970 cards, which run at 925MHz.

Club3D launched three cards in its HD 7970 Poker series – royalAce is the fastest (1050MHz GPU), followed by royalKing (975MHz GPU) while the slowest in the series is the royalQueen (925MHz GPU). All the cards are special for the dual-fan cooling, which performed well on our tests.

Club3D produced an ace from its sleeve when it decided to strap the HD 7970 with special cooling, especially in the case of its highly overclocked HD 7970 royalAce SuperOverClock card. The cooler isn’t as quiet as the GTX 680’s, but it isn’t too loud either, which is more than we can say for AMD HD 7970 GHz Edition’s reference cooler that’s already drawn enough criticism in this respect.

Thanks to the 50 MHz higher GPU clock than that of the regular HD 7970 GHz Edition, the royalAce card beats the GTX 680 in most games.

If you’re the kind that obsesses over the power bill, then HD 7970 GHz Edition probably isn’t your cup of tea since the cards consume significantly more than reference HD 7970s. Additionally, performance-per-Watt ratio on high end graphics cards is something where Nvidia takes the cake, at least when it comes to the last generation of graphics.

In conclusion, the HD 7970 royalAce is definitely a card that any gamer wouldn’t say no to. Ultimately, our decision is well backed by our testing and we’re looking at one of the fastest single GPU graphics cards on the market, with a factory overclock, special cooling and further overclocking headroom.

Although the Radeon HD 7970 GHz Edition has been officially launched by AMD, there has not been that many announcements from AMD's add-in-board (AIB) partners, and currently Club3D is the only partner that has officially announced such a card.

As we wrote earlier, AMD pulled of a press launch and Radeon HD 7970 GHz Edition cards are not scheduled to appear in retail/e-tail until early next month. According to our info, most partners will be focusing on custom HD 7970 GHz Edition graphics cards rather than going with AMD's reference design that tends to be a bit too noisy. Sources are telling us that Club3D and Sapphire could end up as only partners with reference designed HD 7970 GHz Edition cards.

As far as the Club3D's HD 7970 GHz Edition goes, it will hit retail/e-tail under CGHAX-7977SO model number and the only change is the Club3D's own sticker on top of the fan. The Tahiti XT2 chip is left to tick at reference 1000MHz with 1050MHz boost, and it feature 3GB of GDDR5 memory paired up with 384-bit memory interface and clocked at reference 6000MHz effective.

Unfortunately, Club3D did not announce any details regarding the price or the precise availability date but you can expect it to go for around US $499, depending on the region.

Club3D has rolled out a new graphics card series, the PokerSeries that will represent Club3D's premiere lineup when it comes to graphics cards.

According to Club3D, the new PokerSeries will offer a new level of special graphics cards that deliver the best performance, newest features and best coolers. The new PokerSeries will be split into four different segments, the jokerCard, presenting Best of the Best Limited Edition, royalQueen with Best of the Best with Club3D's CoolStream cooling, royalKing with factory overclock and CoolStream, and royalAce, that will feature "super overclocking" with CoolStream cooling.

The first card that will have a chance to be a part of the PokerSeries is the HD 7870 JokerCard based on AMD's 28nm Pitcairn XT GPU with 1280 stream processors. This one ended up clocked at 1000MHz for the GPU, features 2GB of GDDR5 memory clocked at 4800MHz and paired up with a 256-bit memory interface.

As noted in the feature list, the HD 7870 JokerCard will feature Club3D's quite good CoolStream cooler. On HD 7870 JokerCard, it packs three copper heatpipes paired up with a hefty heatsink and single center placed fan. The 7870 JokerCard will ship with DIRT Showdown game title voucher as a bonus. The new JokerCard is expected to hit retail during second week of May.

In addition to the JokerCard, Club3D has also shed some details on its RoyalKing and RoyalQueen cards that will be apparently featured in HD 7970, HD 7950, HD 7870 and HD 7850 versions, while RoyalAce cards are still left to be seen.

Club3D has decided to update its Nvidia line with two new models, the GTX 560 Ti 2048MB and the GTX 560 Ti Battlefield 3 Limited Edition.

As far as specs go, both cards feature the same Nvidia GF114 GPU with 384 CUDA cores and work at 822MHz for the GPU, 1645MHz for shaders and features 2GB of GDDR5 memory clocked at 4008MB and paired up with a 256-bit memory interface. Both cards also feature the same CoolStream dual-slot cooler with two heatpipes and two fans, as well as the same two DVI and mini HDMI output configuration.

As you could have guessed from the name, the 15th anniversary GTX 560 Ti 2048MB Battlefield 3 Limited Edition will be bundled with a voucher for Battlefield 3.

The Battlefield 3 Edition of the new Club3D 2GB GTX 560 Ti should be avialable by the end of next week with a price set at €265/US$355 including VAT, while the plain one is planed to be available before Christmas with a recommended price set at €245/US$329 including VAT.

Club3D has updated its Green Edition line of graphics cards with yet another model, the GTX 560 Ti Green Edition. Thanks to the custom design, this card has a up to 10 percent higher power efficiency when compared to the reference cards.

As far as specs go, the card is pretty much what you would expect from a GTX 560 Ti. It features 384 CUDA cores and ticks at 822MHz for the GPU, 1645MHz for shaders and 4000MHz for 1GB of GDDR5 memory paired up with a 256-bit memory interface. The new GTX 560 Ti Green Edition is cooled by a new design of the CoolStream cooler and features two DVI and one mini HDMI output.

Unfortunately, the price hasn't been announced but the card should show up in retail/e-tail sometimes during this month.

Following Powercolor and Vertex3D, both of which are brands of TUL Corporation, Club3D has also joined in on the fun to release the same dual-GPU HD 6870 X2 card.

Featuring the same 2240 stream processors, GPU clock of 900MHz, dual 256-bit memory interface and 2GB of GDDR5 memory clocked at 4200MHz. The cooler is also identical to the one from Powercolor and you are looking at dual slot cooler with two fans and five copper heatpipes. The card has two DVI, HDMI and two mini Displayport 1.2 outputs.

The card should be avialable sometimes in the first week of July with a price tag set at US $469.

Club3D has mostly been known as Nvidia and ATI/AMD's graphics partner but the company recently ventured into the PSU market as well. So, Club3D has rolled out yet another PSU that will be a part of its "Switching" modular lineup, the 1200W CSP-X1200CS.

The new PSU is targeting enthusiast market and with 1.2kW of output and four 12V rails, it will surely be able to handle anything you throw at it. The +12V rails provide a total of 160Amps (40A per rail) and the new 1.2kW PSU comes with sleeved cables, and all the protections that you would expect from a high-end PSU, including over- and under-voltage, over current, short-circuit, etc.

The new 1.2kW also features an 80Plus Silver certifications with up to 88% efficiency, has an active PFC and is compliant with ATX 12V V2.3 and EPS 12V V2.92 standards. The cooling is handled by a temperature controlled 135mm fan.

Unfortunately, Club3D didn't reveal any details regarding the price or the availability date.

Club3D decided to roll out yet another GTX 550 Ti card but this time with additional 1GB of memory. Featuring Club3D's CoolStream cooler, the new GTX 550 Ti CoolStream OC will be pretty much the same as the original one, except for the fact that it features a total of 2GB of GDDR5 memory.

The card features a custom blue PCB as well as Club3D's own non-reference CoolStream cooler with three heatpipes and a copper base. Since it is a part of the OC series, the card runs at 920MHz for the GPU adn 1840MHz for shaders. The 2GB of GDDR5 memory on 192-bit memory interface ended up clocked at 4100MHz. The card also comes with standard mini HDMI and two DVI outputs and needs a single 6-pin PCI-Express power connector for extra juice.